The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s brutal slaying of a Jordanian pilot and concern about the Obama administration’s strategy to confront the extreme terrorist group are ratcheting up expectations for the White House’s long-awaited national security doctrine.
President Obama plans to release the long-overdue document Friday, and counter-terrorism experts are hoping it will outline a robust, multi-pronged approach to fighting the Islamic State.
“Certainly there has been a recognition of the priority of degrading and destroying [the Islamic State], but how are we going to mobilize our assets to achieve that objective?” asked David Ibsen, executive director of the Counter Extremism Project, a nonpartisan international policy organization.
Ibsen is particularly concerned about the U.S. strategy to combat the Islamic State and other terrorist groups’ sophisticated use of social media to broadcast their jihadist message to the world and recruit new followers.
The Islamic State “may be degraded in terms of convoys, but with one simply produced video and graphic execution, they can still put their message out in a very brutal but effective way,” he said.
In the wake of the pilot’s killing, senators on both sides of the aisle expressed new urgency for the Obama administration to arm vetted Syrian rebels fighting the terrorist group and for Congress to grant the president a new Authorization for Use of Military Force to fight the extreme terrorist group.
“The inhumane burning alive of the Jordanian pilot shows that we can’t deal with [the Islamic State],” said Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat and senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It’s time for us to have the Congress come forth to authorize the use of military force and for the administration to give lethal assistance to the free Syrian Army.”
A separate bipartisan group of senators called on Obama and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to rapidly increase military assistance to Ukraine to defend its borders against escalating Russian aggression.
“Russia’s affront to established international norms is a direct threat to decades of established European security architecture and the democratic aspirations of the Ukrainian people. It must not be allowed to succeed,” said a bipartisan group of 15 senators, including Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Rob Portman of Ohio and Marco Rubio of Florida, with Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Barbara Boxer of California and Ben Cardin of Maryland.
Obama’s new national security doctrine will come several days after a top U.S. intelligence official told Congress that the country’s security challenges are more diverse and complex than any nation has ever experienced.
The increasing scope, volatility and complexity of threats are “the new normal,” Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress Tuesday.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice will release Obama’s official national security strategy and deliver remarks outlining its priorities during an event at the Brookings Institution on Friday.
The document, the White House said, builds on the previous one released in 2010, and updates Obama’s “foreign policy vision and priorities for the American people and Congress — and communicates America’s priorities to its allies around the world.”
Lawmakers have been expecting the new policy document for more than a year, but the rise of the Islamic State and its murderous march through Iraq last year forced the National Security Council staff back to the drawing board and repeatedly delayed is release.
After Obama’s “no strategy” gaffe in the late summer, several senators told the Washington Examiner that the White House had not provided a reason for the delay and a formal document outlining Obama’s broad national security strategy vision was needed more than ever.
“It’s critically important — the world is on fire,” Sen. Susan Collins, a centrist Republican from Maine who previously was chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told the Examiner at the time.
Before the Islamic State commanded the administration’s attention last year, senators expected the newly written strategy, which is required by law, to reflect many of the points Obama made in a speech last spring at the National Defense University.
They thought it would lay out plans to shift the country away from war footing and to make a stronger case for Obama’s long-sought pivot to Asia, as well as his next phase in combating a splintered al Qaeda — all within the context of a leaner budget era.
Congress also expected it to reflect the controversy over Edward Snowden’s disclosures of the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance practices, as well as concerns about the administration’s use of drones to kill terrorist suspects in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
But the rise of the Islamic State and its rapid advance across Iraq in June threw a monkey wrench into the document’s development, and unrest in Yemen and Boko Haram’s bloody rampage in Nigeria complicated the global security calculus.
In 2010, after Obama took office, the most immediate threat to the United States was economic, as the country and Europe struggled to recover from the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
Then, Obama’s national security doctrine focused on strengthening the country’s standing in the world by first solving domestic problems. The president also expressed a need to restore U.S. global leadership by working through international bodies “in which all nations have certain rights and responsibilities.”
“This will allow America to leverage our engagement abroad on behalf of a world in which individuals enjoy more freedom and opportunity, and nations have incentives to act responsibly, while facing consequences when they do not,” the 2010 national security doctrine stated.
Critics of the administration argue that Obama has relied too heavily on international organizations such as the United Nations and NATO to act and punish world bullies when they violate international treaties and norms.
The president, they say, failed to enforce his red-line threat to Syrian President Bashar Assad over his use of chemical weapons on rebels and didn’t stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s incursion into Ukraine.
Worst of all, critics argue, the Obama administration has fallen short in assessing the threat from al Qaeda after it regrouped and established a virulent strain in Yemen and it failed to predict or quickly react to the rise of the Islamic State after pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2012.
“I’m really looking for a shift to really reflect a viable strategy and an acknowledgement that our previous strategies have fallen short,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a Middle East scholar with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“The key question I have is whether there’s an admission that our approach has been wrong and whether there are concrete steps to begin to address the problems.”
A 1986 law requires the president to present Congress with an annual national security strategy. Presidents have regularly failed to submit the statement annually, but Obama has waited the longest to update his initial doctrine delivered in May 2010.
By comparison, George W. Bush was nearly as delinquent, providing only two during his eight years in office, one in 2002 that laid out his case for pre-emptive strikes, what became known as the Bush doctrine, and another in spring 2006 in the middle of his second term. Bill Clinton updated his every year except 1999, and George H.W. Bush submitted three during his four years in office.
